Tick Tock Goes the Clock
by Aimlessly Unknown
Summary: Even for the Doctor. Set during The Impossible Astronaut. Hints of 11/Rose.


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_Disclaimer_: I do not own. Believe me. I wish. THINGS.

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><p>Amy stared in horror at where the Doctor once stood, once tall and tweed and brilliant, yet now laid on the ground. Where his body had folded in on itself and crumpled to the ground – his unyielding body now unmoving as the dust and dirt kicked up and breezed around the shape of his body, cloaking him in particles of the earth. She didn't recognize the scream that tore from her throat as she raced towards the Doctor. From beside her Rory and River stood in shock, neither moving as Amy was.<p>

But Rory, catching up to the shocking events that had transpired (and in that transpiring had broken their very souls into fractions, every fraction willing desperately to restore the Doctor), caught Amy in her sprint to the Doctor. He held her to his chest and kept her away from the Doctor's body, where he knew she would only fall even farther to the pits of despair. Amy turned to his chest and began sobbing violently – her body wracked with heaving sobs that were more like screams than cries.

River stood in stony silence as the man she knew and cared for lay, alone, on the ground. She wished to run to him, to wrap him in her arms and hold his limp body, but she couldn't. There was no strength in her to hold him when all her strength had been devoted to keeping herself standing upright. She had never known the idea of 'paralyzed by sadness' but now she knew the idea backwards, forwards, and all the spaces between.

Yet none of their reactions could hold to the cry that erupted behind them – it was inhuman in a way, the way it echoed and burned with the sheer pain of losing part of their soul. With blurred, hazy eyes Rory and River looked up to see a girl standing there. Amy could not lift her head for all the sadness that had weighed upon her. Rory wanted to shriek to the girl to _get away_! She didn't deserve to be there and see their suffering, their falling apart. But this girl rushed forward with the speed that Rory had never known anyone to have. She ran and ran, stumbling in the sand, and hit her knees beside the Doctor.

The girl clutched him desperately and sobbed roughly to the sky, as if asking why it had stolen the Doctor. She rocked back and forth, aching to bleed herself dry so that there would be nothing left inside; she would rather feel nothing than the despair that pulled upon her soul like chains. She would gladly give up her being for this man, for her alien. She would give all she could and more to save the soul of the man that would never know how much he meant to her – that those three words she had choked out were infinitesimal compared to the feelings that had practically consumed her for all those years.

"Doctor, _Doctor_, oh please, oh _Doctor_, please wake up – wake up please my Doctor, please, just wake up. Wake up and be my _Doctor_ – be here with me please, you mean so much, you mean _everything_, oh please." She babbled through her tears, yet none could understand what she was saying for all the sadness had welled up inside and was she was drowning, drowning, drowning under all the pain – words had no place there, with him in her arms, and yet she could not help herself from speaking.

She had a way with words, he had told her once, when his hair was different and his eyes were different but he was so brilliant, always brilliant. She begged and pleaded, bargained with the sky – with the gods, and let the agony that was burying her close over her head as she died inside.

River stepped up to the girl, still kneeling with the body of River's best friend clutched in her arms as if he was about to be swallowed by the ground itself, "Who," Her voice was rough and pained, "are you?"

The girl didn't notice her, couldn't notice anything but the coldness of the Doctor's already chilled body, and the blankness of his eyes. River knelt down to the girl's side and placed a heavy hand on the girl's arm. Wide-eyed and shutting down emotionally the girl looked up with the biggest brown eyes River had ever seen.

"Who are you?" She asked again, ignoring the ache in her voice and the sorrow she felt because for all the agony inside her very being there looked to be a thousand times more in this girl's.

"I-I-I," The girl was choking on the words, unable to speak clearly, "am _in pain_."

And she was. There wasn't a word alive, alive or dead or lost in space, which could describe how she felt. Anger, agony, despair, devastation, suffering, woe, misery; each was too small, too little to use to describe the utter hopelessness that she felt. The all-encompassing, bone-deep, pain that she felt in her chest – as if there was a void in her chest that caved in on itself and violated her in the darkest way.

"What did he call you?" Rory asked; his wife quaking in his arms, had lost the strength to do anything but stare, wide-eyed, at the Doctor. The tears that marred her face were dry and itchy but she would not move to swipe them away, the evidence of her devastation for all to see. Oh, but on the inside, she _burned_. She burned for the injustice of it all. Burned that she could not hold the Doctor; could not beg him to return. Yet there was also pity, pity for the girl that was holding him and had no one to hold her.

The girl whose eyes were empty of all but the darkest sort of despair, for the girl that felt empty inside – whose fire had been snuffed as the Doctor's life had been. She was to be pitied, to be hated and to be pitied – but mostly to be loved. This girl was loved once upon a time ago, and she had lost it. Amy could see this girl with the Doctor; could see the love and warmth – oh, the loss too. This girl was to be pitied.

The girl's voice broke as she called out a single name, as she wailed for the man that would never call her that again. The emptiness inside, like the mouths of cannons, open and black – swallowing her whole. She couldn't breathe, couldn't feel, but she could mourn.

River laid her hands on the Doctor's hand and held them tightly, the knowledge of this girl and what she meant to the Doctor evoking the strangest sense of hope in her chest; that the Doctor did not die without love. River knew she loved him, knew Amy loved him, knew Rory loved him. But they were all in different ways – River like a best friend, Amy like a little sister, Rory like a brother. Amy had Rory, Rory had Amy, and River had them both. The Doctor may have had them but it wasn't nearly enough. They didn't depend on the Doctor the way he needed them to. But Rose did, she knows Rose did because she knows Rose, knows their story. With the strange hope bubbling in her chest and the pain leaking out of every pore, River Song gave into the urge – and began to cry.

"Rose," Amy tested the word on her lips, regaining the ability to speak, "Rose; oh, Rose."

Amy, borne of love and hope – pity and fear, used the little strength she had to struggle over to where Rose was, where River was. Rory followed her silently. Amy wrapped her thin arms around the shaking Rose and held her, rocking her back and forth soothingly – as a mother would hold her child. Rory snaked his arms around them both and held tightly, a small family – bound by the thread of a man they all knew and loved – tangled and mourning. Rose buried her head in the neck of Amy Pond, clutching the Doctor to their chests, and together they cried.

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><p>Did it suck? Did it rock? TELL ME!<p>

Aimlessly Unknown


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